Tag Archives: scotland

We’re gonna have to choose between having human rights, or having no political power. It’s gonna be a difficult one, but I’m gonna go with human rights

Let me expand that for you, because it’s really the option between;

Having human rights, political self-determination, a currency that isn’t linked to Conservative austerity, freedom to pursue left-wing political causes, and the ability to decide our country’s fate.

And having no political power, having our most populous city be England’s meat-shield for nuclear weapons and disasters, and our people continually denigrated by the ruling government and popular media of what is ostensibly ‘our’ overall shared nation.

The idea of Scotland even having a voice was actually used as a scare tactic by the Tories in the General Election. They used the bogeyman of a Labour and Scottish National Party coalition as something that was automatically going to be a bad thing. Labour, for their part, immediately doubled-down and stated that in no way were they ever going to work with the SNP, and look where we are now.

They’re all related, but not the same. They all have different languages descended from a similar group, Irish (Gaeilge), Scottish (Gàidhlig), Manx (Gaelg), Welsh (Cymraeg), Cornish (Kernowek), and Breton (Brezhoneg). Some are more widely spoken than others, for example Welsh is still commonly spoken in Wales, whereas hearing Cornish in Cornwall instead of English is rare.

All Celtic nations have varied mythology and culture.

Irish Mythology is different from Breton Mythology, and even Welsh and Cornish mythology (arguably the most related Celtic Nations) have subtle differences to each other. I wish I could add more about the cultures at this time but my knowledge of Celtic nations is primarily made up of the history and languages of those regions, particularly Cornwall.

You might have notice that England and English are missing from this, because the English descended from Anglo-Saxons, who were German invaders that came to the isles right around the Fall of the Roman empire in the 5th Century, erasing the Celtic influence in what is now England.

So what this all really means is that Celtic is an umbrella term, and just because it’s Celtic doesn’t mean it has anything to do with Ireland at all. So don’t assume that just because someone’s talking about something Celtic that they’re talking about something Irish.

James Wallace
(d. September, 1688), a minister in Kirkwall, recorded the arrival of
the Inuit in Orkney, a group of islands which lie just off the north
coast of the Scottish mainland. He drafted his account of the event at
some point between 1685 and 1688, but it did not appear in print until
the posthumous publication of his A Description of the Isles of Orkney (1693).

Wallace recorded the Inuit ‘Finnmen’, a local term that associated them with Finland, but he had read widely and correctly identified their origin as Inuit from Greenland.

Wallace’s account is as follows:

“Sometime about this Country are seen
these Men which are called Finnmen; In the year 1682, one was seen
sometime sailing, sometime Rowing up and down in his little Boat at the
south end of the isle of Eda[y],
most of the people of the Isle flocked to see him, and when they
adventured to put out a boat with men to see if they could apprehend
him, he presently sped away most swiftly: And in the Year 1684, another
was seen from Westra[y],
and for a while after they got a few or no Fishes: for they have this
Remark here, that these Finnmen drive away the fishes from the place to
which they come.”

There is quite a bit of evidence that this “discovery” was actually an ongoing amount of traffic between the Inuit peoples in Greenland and Orkney and a few parts of Scandinavia, as is discussed later in the article linked above. Distinctively Inuit tools (like harpoon heads), clothing, other material evidence and written records exist that point to Inuit presence in Europe significantly earlier. You can read an exploration of this evidence in The American Discovery of Europe by Jack D. Forbes, (Chapter 6: The Inuit Route to Europe, p. 133).

“They stop you and they search you. When you try and ask them
why they change the subject and say they’ve seen you with this person or
that person. It’s a load of fucking shite. It does my nut in. It really
fries my brain.”

Callum is 16 and from Irvine in North Ayrshire. This is the hometown
of Scotland’s new first minister. But the Scotland of social justice
that Nicola Sturgeon says she is determined to pursue remains as far
from a reality here as anywhere else in the country. Almost one third of
children in Irvine live in poverty and opportunities for young people
are scant.

I meet Callum at the Redburn Youth Centre. Teenagers come here to
learn writing, numeracy and vocational skills. It has been running since
2003 and provides a vital service for young people in the community out
of education or work.

Callum is one of those young people. He was first subject to a police
stop when he was just 10 years old. The police said they had seen him
smoking. Being stopped and searched by police has been a regular
occurrence ever since. When I ask him how many times this has happened ,
the response is as expected – too many to count.

The stop and search rate for 16 year olds in North Ayrshire in the
last nine months of 2013 amounted to 1,354 searches per 1,000. In other
words, there was more stop searches as there were 16 year olds. If we
calculated this rate for boys alone, this rate would be sure to
dramatically increase.

One of the youth workers at Redburn, Richie Caig, 43, says young
people’s experience with the police has altered from when he grew up.
“It’s definitely changed since I was young,” says Caig. “We’d hang about
outside the shops, the police came along and they would say ‘move on’.
But there was none of this searching business.”